Haven't posted on here properly in a while, been really busy with changing jobs!

I've been messing around in Unreal for a bit now, just trying to get my head around everything and I've also been wanting to learn a lot more about blueprints too, so I decided to start yet another generic sci-fi scene! Yay! I don't think anyone's done sci-fi in Unreal yet, should be fairly unique.

Seriously though, I do want to try and separate this from other sci-fi scenes a bit, I'm not entirely sure how just yet. I'm going for a kind of retro look, with the fake wooden panelling. Gonna try and come up with some sort of background story to kinda embed it in some kind of universe a bit more. Thinking of doing something a little System Shock 2, an abandoned space station and you have to figure out what happened. But the entire point of this scene is to just let me explore Unreal a little more, get used to the rendering, and learn a lot more about blueprints. I want this to be really interactive.

Orbiting Planetary Engineering Facility

Summary: An orbiting space station above a planet in the beginning stages of being terraformed. The space station is a base for the research scientists and engineers involved in the terraforming. They primarily live on this station, but also go on excursions down to the planet for weeks at a time in order to seed the planet with algae and other microbes, with the end goal of making the planet hospitable in generations to come. The station generates it's own gravity via its spinning superconductors below the station, and has the technology to create food (as well as having large stores from Earth), and also generates and recycles it's own breathable air.

A large group of scientists and engineers left Earth 40 years previously, aboard a giant interstellar space station, in order to travel to the nearest star system to ours and start up a human colony in a different star system.

However, Earth received a distress signal 5 years into the terraforming process. A single garbled message was received, and no other contact has been made since. Fortunately, since the departure of the original crew, technology has been developed that has reduced the large amount of time required to travel across space, but the time required is still fairly substantial.

You are one of the crew members sent to investigate the cause of the distress signal. After waking up from 10 years in stasis, you are approaching the station, eager to find out what caused the distress signal.

Here's a few blockout shots of where it's at. I've been working on a door and light sequence, so that when you open the door, the lights flick on one by one. Hoping to add some audio in too to sell the effect! At the moment the scene is quite small; just the one bunk room, so that I don't get too burnt out in the blockout phase. I may extend this scene a little further afterwards. Also, I'm thinking of changing out the desk area for a kitchen area to prepare food.

With this scene I want to achieve the following:

-Keep everything on the grid so it is easy to swap out sections for alternatives. We did this a lot on Alien Isolation and it worked really well.
-Learn Unreal blueprint scripting! A few examples being having lights turn on when the door opens and turn off again when the player leaves the room, having the TV interactable and have it dynamically light the scene, and also maybe be able to open the window shutter and allow the sunlight in. Nothing particularly mindblowing, but just a bit interactivity which I haven't really done in anything I've worked on before.
-Experiment with audio.
-Learn more about Unreal's rendering.

Cheers guys, please give any crits you can. It's all still very blockout so I'm willing to change anything!

Wow this looks excellent. It's a really believable space. I'm not sure how I feel about the wood panels though. I feel like it gives it a "what we thought 2050 would be like in 1950" feel, which could actually be a good thing depending on what you're going for. Overall excellent work.

Sorry for the delay in posting again, I've had barely any time to work on this. I've actually just been trying to define more of a style with the wooden panels, and I think I've found something I'm happy with.

I've worked a little on the planet/skybox too, but my material shader knowledge is a little iffy so I'm stuck with the planet shader at the moment!

Need to get cracking on with this, but I'm not getting too much free time at the moment! Also, I'm aware that the lighting might be a little dark at the moment. I need to calibrate my monitors, I've no idea which one is correct!

(Excuse the crappy quality, these were grabbed using Windows Snip tool lol)

Wow cool this really reminds me of Alien Isola-- oh you worked on it!!
.

I was going to say it reminded me of the Nostromo, probably every ship with white panels reminds us of it.
So it's your first scene on UE4 or first time messing with blueprints? How much time to get all that built?

Nah to be honest, I haven't been looking at any Alien reference whatsoever, I've just been looking at ship and submarine interiors mainly. I think the thing that is making it look quite 'Alien' at the moment is the bed, and I must admit that was heavily inspired from my time working on Alien Isolation! Might change that up a bit and make something a little more unique. I'm using lots of tiling materials like we did at CA, so it's quite easy to change stuff without having to re-bake. I guess some of my time on Alien is rubbing off on this, but in terms of architecture it's nothing like Alien.

@Techuser - Yeah it's my first time using UE4. I've messed around with a few different environments before this one, but this is the furthest along so far. I want to finish this one! I am also going to be using Blueprints, the doors actually slide open when you enter the room, and the lights used to flicker on in sequence, but I was having issues with lighting. Need to do another pass on that!

@Josh - I'm actually just using the default grid, working in centimeters. The corner modules are 50cm x 50cm (half a meter), and the other wall units are 2m, 4m etc. Trying to snap everything to the grid if I can.

It looks awesome. I really enjoy your work. But i have a problem. I always thought you NEED to have quads. And now i see this beatiful modells with quads and n-gons. could someone please give me an explanation?

This is looking really cool dude! really liking the wooden panels like everyone that awesome mylar plastic is looking great too. cheers for the break down of meshes, could you maybe do similar for the textures/materials? its interesting to see

Thank you everyone for the kind words and feedback, much appreciated. I shall take on board all comments! I'm still chipping away at this, not had a great deal of time on it since my last post though.

I have thought a little more about the story behind this scene, and will be working to incorporate elements of this into the environment. Adam, your Evil Genius' lair scene was definitely an inspiration behind making this kind of thread, even if I did post it a little later in the development process than yours!

Orbiting Planetary Engineering Facility

Summary: An orbiting space station above a planet in the beginning stages of being terraformed. The space station is a base for the research scientists and engineers involved in the terraforming. They primarily live on this station, but also go on excursions down to the planet for weeks at a time in order to seed the planet with algae and other microbes, with the end goal of making the planet hospitable in generations to come. The station generates it's own gravity via its spinning superconductors below the station, and has the technology to create food (as well as having large stores from Earth), and also generates and recycles it's own breathable air.

A large group of scientists and engineers left Earth 40 years previously, aboard a giant interstellar space station, in order to travel to the nearest star system to ours and start up a human colony in a different star system.

However, Earth received a distress signal 5 years into the terraforming process. A single garbled message was received, and no other contact has been made since. Fortunately, since the departure of the original crew, technology has been developed that has reduced the large amount of time required to travel across space, but the time required is still fairly substantial.

You are one of the crew members sent to investigate the cause of the distress signal. After waking up from 10 years in stasis, you are approaching the station, eager to find out what caused the distress signal.

And here's another shot of a kitchen area in the bunk room. Not quite sure what I think of the white cupboard doors/drawers. Might change that to the same wood, but don't know if it'll blend in too much! Might try putting in some metal frames.

After this, I'd really like to make the airlock you first enter, if this were a proper game. I love the idea of you coming out of stasis, donning your spacesuit, docking to the space station, and finding out what happened onboard.

Thanks Mospheric. I've started to do a little more dressing now, but there's still a long way to go!

Evil, they're just simple Stationary lights with a long length and a slightly wider radius which gives them their reflection. Along with an emissive material on the light mesh.

Anyway, sorry for the long delay in posting... I've been really busy this past month and I've not had a great deal of time to work on this scene! I'm trying to prioritize things a little more now, in order to get this finished as soon as possible. I'm really enjoying working on this at the moment though, I don't feel burnt out at all. In fact, this is the longest I've ever worked on one project without getting burnt out which is a good sign! I think it's because I'm having a great time learning Unreal 4, which is really incredible to work with.

So I've mainly been working on a few more props in my spare time, as well as finishing off the majority of the base environment. I feel that it just needs lot of dressing now to make it feel like a lived in space. I want to rip open some of these cupboards and just generally have more stuff scattered about. Also want to do something with the floor too. Maybe some leaking water would be cool, just because... PBR. :P

Anyway, feel free to suggest any more ideas for props etc, and any other feedback. It's getting a bit closer to the end but there is still a lot more I want to do!

I'm loving it thus far, really a nicely composed environment. What I'd suggest is to add more variance, both geometrically and in the form of materials. Geometrically, I'd go for a lot more simulated cloth with the basic geometry used as colliders, blankets, pillows and the what not. In the form of materials, I'd suggest introducing some semi-translucent matter like soft statues or dense beverages. And a bunch of little emissive elements because space and the future.

This is looking fantastic Pogo. I'm really digging the wood grain over everything, makes it feel as if its from the 70's or 80s lol. If you mind me asking, are you using modular textures on these pieces (I can see alot of stuff repeated around), and are the pieces of the corridors and other areas modular as well?

Loving the scene so far dude, got a really nice retro vibe to it, especially with the wood panelling, I especially like all the mementos to family members little photos etc. I thought I would offer up a few points hopefully to help you out with pushing this to be as top notch as possible; as it is really good already. I think all it needs is that final level of polish to make it amazing. These crits are really nit picky just to let you know.

Okay so first I reckon you could push the lighting further. After playing destiny a little over the weekend they have some great lighting in there interior scenes. One thing they do a lot is really exaggerate there focal points and lead the player with flickering lights. Currently your strongest focal point is actually the outside with the planets and sun. I think you should pick something inside and focus more on that. If its the bed turn on the spotlights and maybe add a reading light. You could definitely bring in more contrast in my opinion. I did you a quick paint over for that, just add more contrast and interest in your focal points specifically, you wont get a noisy feel then because you open up the other areas to fall into areas of rest. Add decals and variation in these areas specifically.

As far as the rest of the scene goes, I would try and break up the tileables a bit more, at the moment I think you could push your roughness contrast more. Put some dirt decals to break up smooth areas would look good. Add some more story telling elements in, maybe there is some coats hanging up, someone has chucked some shoes down in an odd place, and they havent cleaned up the kitchen properly. Just because its Sci-fi it doesnt have to be clinical. I know you added some draws fallen out, be cool to fill those with kitchen equipment, put some bits on the floor, someone could have been in a hurry, or maybe someone was looking for something a burglar perhaps? Add some more props that are relevant to their locations, kitchen below for example. This has some metal and wood similar to your scene, just as an idea for some props

The destiny example is good to look at as well as they seem to have a lot more variation in there textures, and they add quite a lot of geometry to expose stuff, Naughty dog did this a lot with modelling bricks in etc. if you add some exposed panels in and have detail under that, I reckon that could help a lot. The first scene of Destiny should help cause they have an interior where they turn on the lights like you mentioned you wanted to do.

Cheers man, that stuff is all planned for sure, I've actually just started on a big dressing pass and I re-worked the lighting slightly last night, as you saw on my machine earlier! One of the biggest things, as you mentioned, is breaking up those tileables. I definitely want to get a lot more decal work in there. I'm focusing on making the decals that appear in the scene in its 'intact' version, and then working down the list towards more grimey/grungey decals. Pulling off some panels is a good idea too, cheers man. Really appreciate the big break down dude.

It's amazing how long it takes to dress a scene when you're having to make every single prop yourself! I'm actually trying to spend less time per asset now in order to get this finished. Before I was spending way too long on the high poly of each prop, then I realised that it's all about relevant scale within the scene.

I also have a load of exterior stuff I want to do as well, but I want to do a very rough first dressing pass first.

Here's a current screengrab of where I'm at with the current dressing (Still lots more to do!)

Loving it. I think you might have overdone it a little bit with the drawers though. Unless this place is some sort of forgotten bunker that other people got in later on and stole stuff or something, usually nobody would leave the drawers like that I think.

If it were me I would at least put the drawers back or like the one in the middle that is just somewhat open.

Either way, it's looking great. Good luck and can't wait to see the final version!

So I've been doing a lot more dressing work over the past couple of weeks when I've had chance to work on this. I want to do some work on the exterior of the scene next, and then I'm going to call this done (unless I get more feedback and ideas!). I don't want to burn out on this too much.

Here's some new screenshots:

I'm going to post this up for download when Im finished, with the hopes that maybe other people could learn a little about Unreal from this scene. Would you guys be interested in that?

This is kickass. I like the future retro feel going on here. A lot of the time you see very chrome and metal looking space environments that don't look like places where people actually live. But what you've done here with the combination of wood paneling and little to no chrome makes it seem cozy. Environments like these make me wonder why environment artists aren't comissioned to do things with real world applications.

Really the only thing I would add is a table and a chair or two. just seems like you would have to stand up to see the television, and couldn't watch it from the bed without laying in the opposite direction.